February 2026- Five People Shaping the Gathering Economy
Tahira Endean (IMEX Education), Walter Charnizon (UpLink), Michael Barnett (InGo), Cindy Y. Lo (Red Velvet), and Carl Winston (San Diego State).
Today we’re spotlighting five people who, in very different ways, are shaping the Gathering Economy from the inside out. Not with noise. Not with trend-chasing. But with leverage.
If you look closely at how this industry actually evolves, it’s rarely because of a single blockbuster event or a flashy acquisition. It’s because someone rethinks the curriculum. Someone retools the exhibition model. Someone reframes marketing as behavioral science. Someone protects the cultural integrity of a city. Someone trains the next generation to carry it forward.
That’s the through line here.
Five different positions in the ecosystem.
Five different levers of influence.
The full profiles follow.
Tahira Endean oversees education for IMEX Group, one of the most influential platforms in global meetings. What gets programmed there doesn’t just fill time slots—it signals what the industry values. Facilitation, intentional design, agency in the room: these ideas travel far beyond the stage.
Michael Barnett built InGo around a simple but powerful insight: recognition drives behavior. The speaker announcement graphic that floods social feeds isn’t fluff—it’s infrastructure. Social proof becomes distribution. Distribution becomes growth.
Carl Winston leads the L. Robert Payne School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at San Diego State University. While others build events, he builds the people who will run them—instilling leadership, resilience, and service at the foundational level and shaping the next generation of hospitality and event leaders.
Walter Charnizon grew up working exhibition floors, absorbing the mechanics of trade shows from the ground up. Now, through UpLink, he’s extending that DNA beyond the physical hall—experimenting with digital layers and even space-based connectivity. It’s a rare arc: from aisle traffic to orbit-level thinking.
Cindy Y. Lo leads Red Velvet, the Austin-based firm that has helped global brands navigate culturally charged environments like SXSW. Her work is a reminder that global strategy collapses without local fluency. Culture isn’t installed; it’s interpreted.